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LaurenPackardFirstEssay 6 - 20 May 2015 - Main.LaurenPackard
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| | | I. What is biopiracy? | |
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< | Bioprospecting describes the process whereby pharmaceutical and agricultural companies discover and commercialize new products based on biological resources, usually plants. Oftentimes Big Pharma and Big Ag appropriate generations' worth of indigenous knowledge without compensating indigenous peoples. This form of exploitation is known as biopiracy. Some examples: | >
> | The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) engenders ownership to any person or corporation who can show novelty, utility, and non-obviousness. Such a scheme enables ownership of life itself.
Bioprospecting describes the process whereby pharmaceutical companies discover and commercialize new products based on biological resources, usually plants. Oftentimes Big Pharma, wielding US intellectual property law, appropriates and then commercializes generations of indigenous knowledge without compensating indigenous peoples. This form of exploitation is known as biopiracy. Some examples: | | | Neem Tree | | | The US has also granted American companies with patents on Gabonese oubli berries (granted in 1994, hit the market in 2009 as artificial sweetener “cweet”), a variety of Mexican yellow bean (granted in 1999 and revoked in 2008), Bolivian quinoa (granted in 1994 and abandoned shortly after) and Indian turmeric (granted in 1995 and revoked in 1997). | |
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> | While biopiracy threatens the autonomy and standard of living of those whose knowledge is appropriated, its implications are further-reaching. Intellectual property law now suffuses the globe and concentrates monopolies (on life, no less) in the hands of a few at the expense of everyone else. | | | II. Intellectual property laws as a mechanism for neo-colonialism
In 1994 the WTO began administering the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Right (TRIPS). TRIPS introduced intellectual property rights into international trade for the first time—essentially, it requires all developing nations to conform the basic tenants of US intellectual property law. The US Supreme Court first allowed a patent on a living organism in 1980. Since then, patents on gene sequences and particular protein functions have become commonplace. (see Diamond v. Chakrabarty). | | | The most damning feature of the Nagoya Protocol is that it still advocates strict adherence to Western intellectual property ideals. Genetic resources will still have “an owner”—the countries wherein these resources are found merely get more oversight in regards to their relationship vis-à-vis would-be colonizers. Those countries also get a bit more of the proceeds from the appropriation and exploitation of their indigenous knowledge. Perhaps Monsanto will reinvest some profits in India by building a lab there, so nearby residents can work as lab technicians instead of living by subsistence—in other words, developing countries can support their occupiers’ efforts and more efficiently perpetuate Western legal constructs. The Protocol says that’s “progress.” But it is merely entrenching colonists more deeply into developing countries. | |
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< | The third-world communities that developed knowledge of and cross-bred and cultivated the plants do not own the genetic resources they helped create. One solution is to dissolve intellectual property’s regime of strict dichotomy between individual ownership and the public domain. | >
> | An inventiveness requirement in lieu of the current non-obviousness and novelty requirements would functionally eliminate patents on molecules or other forms of life. | | |
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